What are your bad writing habits?+ Help needed!

Writers' Corner
1

Mine are:

  • mixing up past tense and present tense (“she says” or “she said”)
  • mixing up third person and first person
  • using the same words twice (recently the thesaurus has become my best friend)
  • using the same names like “[name]William[/name]” for unknown or main characters. And running out of last names…
    Also I have a dilemma regarding what story I should work on/complete. Currently *ALL my stories are unfinished. I jump around with them and I cant decide which one I want to work on. I like all of them and wish I could simultaneously work on them at the same time! :expressionless:
    Any tips for this?
2

I don’t have many, except for not making enough time for my writing, as I have a full-time and a part-time job. Sounds as if you’re not thinking before you write, which is why you run into problems.

  1. Mixing up tenses and pov: Decide which tense and which pov for and then stick to it for at least three chapters or 50 pages, whichever comes first.
  2. repetition of names. get a naming bible and a phone book. will solve all your problems re names.
    If you’re not finishing stories, it’s because your characters are not strong enough to carry the stories. I recommend you read the following books: On Writing, by [name]Stephen[/name] [name]King[/name]; Character and Viewpoint, by [name]Orson[/name] [name]Scott[/name] [name]Card[/name], and Techniques of Fiction (can’t remember the author). These are very good basics to have. They come complete with exercises.
    You are worrying – with tenses and word repetition – about stuff that shouldn’t bother you in a first draft. First draft is for discovering the character and working out the plot. Very basic stuff. Worry about the editing AFTER you finish your first draft. Everyone makes mistakes in a first draft, that’s why it’s called a first draft. My first published children’s book was only 1200 words long but it took a whole year to get right. Stop worrying, arm yourself with complete knowledge of your characters, and finish SOMETHING. It doesn’t matter what you finish, just that you finish.
3

Wow thank you for the tips! I’ll definitely look into those books. And from now on I’ll just write freely and then edit afterwards. It would be nice to finish a piece of work for once…

4

I can relate! Sometimes I switch genders, like instead of saying “he said this” I end up saying “she said this” or whatever. I usually catch it on revisions but it is annoying that it happens!

Right now my biggest bad writing habit is that I just am not inspired to write. :confused: But the reasoning behind that is incredibly personal and I doubt you’re having the same issue, lol. So I won’t go into that further. :slight_smile:

I also seem to name all my bad guys [name]James[/name]. I don’t know why. I don’t really hate [name]James[/name] all that much (although it’s definitely not a favorite, and I would never consider it for a child, personally), but my bad guy usually just ends up being a [name]James[/name]. It just suits my bad guys. I have no clue why, haha.

5

Ahahaha I know what you mean!
And some names just work for certain characters.
Like I also tend to name the parent of the characters [name]Amy[/name] or [name]Richard[/name], then there’s [name]William[/name] for other side characters or parents :confused:
But I can definitely see [name]James[/name] as a name for a bad guy/villain too.

6

I remember one time I wrote a story for one of my university creative writing classes and my teacher asked me if it were a story or a compendium of names? that certainly cured me of the name problem, because I was so embarrassed…now I develop the character first and let the name come.

7

My issue is whenever I hit a writer’s block or get bored with a story, instead of working on writing exercises or just plowing through the obstacle, I start a new story. It doesn’t help to get something published when you have dozens (literally… DOZENS) of novels started.

Also, my writing process is different with each book. Some stories start with a quote or a conversation, something that could be in the middle of the story, and I branch off in both directions from there. I only have one or two stories where I actually started at the beginning and worked towards the end. I get bored quickly, though, and keeping that mindset of going only start to finish almost always forces me to turn my attention to another project until another spark of an idea of a conversation or an action brings me back to the original story. It’s bogus, really. :confused:

JLH

8

Yeah I find myself only interested in certain aspects of my story and rather focus on that instead of the rest :confused: sometimes I just start from the beginning or middle too.
I better just stick to one story from now and work through it and fully develope the characters.

9

I love male names on females, so I find that most of my female characters have male names. I’m just starting to get out of that habit because not everyone wants to read about a girl named [name]Joey[/name], [name]Easton[/name], [name]Dylan[/name]…ect. Commas are another one of mine and I too start another story when I get writers block.

10

First, I want to address your (the original poster’s) problem, since it was one I had for a while. You’re going to hate this advice, but I’m going to give it: keep writing. Keep chugging along, hopping from story to story. Eventually you’ll start one, and you’ll feel a little fire kindle in your chest. If you’re like me, every time you start a new story, you tell yourself ‘this is the one. this is the one i’ll finish. i know it this time’. But when you start this story, it will be rumbling in your chest, and you’ll start telling people about it, and you’re friends will get sick of the Chronicles of fill-in-the-blank, and you’ll make a wall-sized map, and it will sing to you.

This is a long-winded way of saying you haven’t found the right story yet. Keep having fun with different ideas, play around a little, let the words take you, come what may. You will find the right story–or, more truthfully, the right story will find you–eventually. That’s what happened to me. I’m on 21094 words right now, and the most I’ve ever written was ten-thousand something (and that…was bad…).

Of course, self-discipline is important too. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been working on TCHC and have wanted to shift to some other epic journey. But I /love/ this one, and once you’ve found one you love, you can really keep firing at it, even when writers’ block sinks its teeth into your keyboard.

Once you start and finish that story, just keep writing. I can tell that, once you have the sufficient fire and self-discipline that staying focused on one story requires, then more will come.

My writing problems–well, the chief one was fixed with The Chronicles of [name]Herbert[/name] and Celwaithe (working title, don’t worry.) I found my story.

I tend to have problems with my villains. In TCHC, I started with a wonderful-ish villain, shifted to another villain who I don’t really love yet, and am contemplating turning protag’s love interest into the new villain. None of my villains are particularly hate-able either, which is unfortunate.

Another problem is that my characters don’t have distinctive voices. That’s bad. Very…very…bad. Needless to say. When I type, it sounds like one person is talking. However, that’s next-draft-fixable, so I don’t worry about it too much.

11

[name]One[/name] of my worst habits? Constantly changing and worrying about the names of the characters. It gives me a huge mental block if I don’t think the names are perfect, and I’ll stop writing completely for a week or two because I’m using all my time researching names. By the time I actually find a name and return to writing, it takes forever to get back into the groove of things.

I’m also a plot-hopper. I can’t stick to one story for more than a month - otherwise it just feels tired to me and all my inspiration runs dry. My best advice about this is go with it - you might be horribly stuck with [name]Story[/name] X, but you’re brimming with ideas for [name]Story[/name] Z. You never know :slight_smile:

12

Wow thanks for the advice guys! Helps a lot! :slight_smile:

13

It’s been a very long time since I completed any story, and some time since I even seriously worked on my last one. That last one was actually a planned set of stories that I worked on, off and on, for years. In the course of that time, I realized that most of my previous assumptions about what I could do as a writer were wrong.

It’s not really fair to say I was working on the same stor(ies) for that long. I revised the concept so much it became an entirely new series.

I wish I could just turn out lots of junk so I’d have something to edit. I could say I have a strong inhibition against writing anything I don’t like, but it’s worse than that. If you ask me to write an intentionally boring story, I… will just stand there staring. I don’t know how to make something intentionally bad any more than I know how to make something good. “Boring” would be the hardest thing for me, because I always had trouble making any story take as long as I wanted to. I could never understand what made my writing so different from the books I read, why anything I wrote was breakneck pace.

I’ve never been name-obsessed enough for that to bog me down, though some related/similar things will trip me up more. I fixate on trivial elements.

I can’t figure how to go from an idea to a story. Often my ideas aren’t an outline so much as “I want to write a story about (subject) including (character) and (scenes).” I can have a feel for what I want but can’t put it into words. In cases where I do have an outline, it’s not much easier to turn it into a story.

I notice that I often conceive things visually. I realize I know much better how to set a scene with pictures than words, except I’m not a good enough artist to draw the images I have in mind. [EDITED: originally I said "put into words’, which is exactly what I didn’t mean.]

I tend to drift into worldbuilding; it seems I find information more interesting than narrative.

14

I have this problem too. Also, I write little “clips” from my stories the instant they pop into my head with the intention of stringing it all together, and never doing so.
I also get too involved in the names, or chracters, and forget to do everything else. I also sort of skimp on my reasearch (guilty) or just wikipedia things! I have some quirks to work out this year! Oh! I also uses certain words too much, resuse story ideas, and make everyone sound the same.

  • [name]Athena[/name]
15

Ohhh, I most definitively skimp on the research because I just want to get right into the thick of things so to speak. Like, I just want to get on with it and not have to worry if certain things are supposed to be in a certain era, etc. I just want to get my ideas on paper before I forget about them or change them in a way I don’t like. I really need to work on that if my story is to be believable and realistic.
Back to the drawing board…

16

Writing in the first person… I know I shouldn’t, they say it’s lazy, but it’s the only way I seem to be able to write.

17

I would say my biggest problems when writing is that I get the fire in my chest, as akky says, but it dies down after a while. On some parts of my story it flares up so bright I think I may break my fingers from typing! Other times, well, I may only get about two sentances every ten minutes. It can get so annoying when this happens! I find it helps to think of the next scene that makes your fire flare (and I mean REALLY think about it) and this may start you up on your current point.
I also find that I may be out somewhere, and I’ll hear a name or a word or an entire story point, and I think “Wow, that will go perfectly in my story!” but when I get to my computer, the whole idea’s forgotten. I’ve begun to take a small notebook out with me wherever I go, just in case.
This next thing is going to sound incredibly weird, but I find it helps. I don’t know if that’s just me or if it’s a thing other people can do, but I might go downtown on my own, even if I don’t need anything, and I’ll act like one of my characters. If I have any clothes that are similar to what they would wear, I would put them on. If they were a female, I’d do my make-up like theirs. I would walk, talk, and even begin to think like them. I find this helps me to understand what my character would do in a certain situation. [name]Even[/name] just in a conversation with someone, I would find it easier to speak through them. Now, that doesn’t mean if your character’s a drunk or a misguided teenager that you should go on a bender or do something illegal!!! Definately not. [name]Just[/name] act like them as best you can.
I also have a problem with tensing…Especially when my character is ‘daydreaming’, or being philosophical. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to cure this!
I hope I’ve helped even a little!

18

Okay, yeah, this is my life. Within the past year I’ve started about a hundred stories. I have finished ten of them at the most. :confused:

Other habits:

  • I always have way too many characters, or barely any.
  • Some parts of my stories are pure comedy, others are drama and angst. They compete for each other.
  • I can’t start a story until I’ve written a blurb about my characters and given them first, middle and last names.
  • I tend to sneak what I like at the moment in there. Right now, I love Assassin’s [name]Creed[/name] and theatre, and guess what my characters talk about often?
19

I notice that I often conceive things visually. I realize I know much better how to set a scene with pictures than words, except I’m not a good enough artist to draw the images I have in mind. [EDITED: originally I said "put into words’, which is exactly what I didn’t mean.]

I tend to drift into worldbuilding; it seems I find information more interesting than narrative.

Yes to both of those for me. Especially when it comes to characters–so clear in my mind, but when I put the pencil in my hand it spins into chaos. I wish I had advice for that, but I really don’t. [name]Do[/name] try experimenting with different styles of art–painting, markers, colored pencils, graphic art, sculpture, cartoon-y, realistic, et cetera. It helps if you find something that works for you.

Worldbuilding–my love of it–is killing my story right now. In the corner of my eye I see the 3x3 foot map I have of Irillia (the world of my current story). Of course, I have that, and a crapload of index cards regarding the world, and have spent so much time obsessing over those that I’m squashing my story. I’m gonna keep struggling though–it’s coming, just very, very slowly. pouts

I’m definitely a research skive-off-er. I’d love to write a historical one day, but right now only have one half-completed short story and another in-the-outlining stage. I just don’t have the yearning to submerge myself in another time period (but the future)–yet. I’m keeping my eyes peeled for an event that shakes me to the core. When that happens, there’ll be no stopping me. (hopefully.)

I would say my biggest problems when writing is that I get the fire in my chest, as akky says, but it dies down after a while. On some parts of my story it flares up so bright I think I may break my fingers from typing! Other times, well, I may only get about two sentances every ten minutes. It can get so annoying when this happens!

This is currently happening to me, so I know just how you feel. [name]Just[/name] keeping struggling through it–that’s what I’m doing.

  • I always have way too many characters, or barely any.

That’s one of my biggest problems (don’t know if I mentioned it in my last post here). TCHC is currently being overrun with a hundred little seven-year-olds, and four rather rambunctious dogs. frowns Not exactly where it was planned to go. I need advice on this majorly!

20

Mine is definitly the POV-shift. I know I can’t (and don’t have to) write the whole book from one perspective, no single character is going to be in all important scenes, but sometimes I switch viewpoints within a scene or split a scene in two so I have an excuse to do so.

Second problem: Using gendered pronouns on a non-gendered character. I constantly slip into “he”. [name_m]German[/name_m] doesn’t use “they” for people of unknown (or without) gender, and it’s hard to think what I can’t say. The limits of my language truly are the limits of my world.

Third problem: Either too much detail or too little. I forget that I’m supposed to describe the surroundings, light, temperature, sounds, smells, and then when I suddenly remember I overdo it to make up for it.